The Urge Hums
by tittlekid
Summary: He's not a family man. A short on the Mysterious Stranger and Miss Fortune, for the falloutkinkmeme.


For the prompt: _So what's a random chance entity like you doing in a place like this?_ Mysterious Stranger/Miss Fortune.

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><p>It was raining when she stepped into my life.<p>

It was a rain of bullets, yeah, but in my line of work you don't have time for semantics.

There I was on the same old night doing the same old job: protecting the big nameless names of the Wastes. It was thankless work- had been for my father in Oregon, and his father before him in Cali, and fathers before that. I wouldn't be surprised if I saw my nose or chin on an Anchorage soldier in an old newspaper picture, unnoticed and unnamed. If any seeds I'd sown bore fruit and were unlucky enough, they wouldn't fall any further from the tree. They would find themselves drawn to a lifetime of solitude and righteousness reserved for those who will change the world. If I could have a son, I'd like to tell him that it was alright to walk the Wastes, normal to have a burning desire to save a stranger he might not have even found yet while feeling nothing for the people around him, but I never will. We're not dads or papas, not cut out to be family men. We're the final line of defence for everyone out there. We walk the world to make sure it keeps turning, even if it doesn't know it.

That night, I was walking behind a Follower in Arizona. I couldn't tell you why I followed him, but for the divinity I felt in my hands as I shot down a tribal and saved his life for the first time. I was born to pull the trigger on that savage in that moment, and I'd pull it as many times as it needed me to in the future.

The Follower - momentarily separated from his group - was journeying through Phoenix amongst the metal and under the stars- then, suddenly, under attack. The trio of rabid dogs was culled quickly, but the Follower's trusty pistol jammed on the last. I made to move in - my magnum was built to be trustier, after all - but a sparkle of light and a flash of red froze me.

She slunk out of the shadows like she was born from them, even with that feathered showgirl outfit hugging all the right places. She was a splash of Vegas razzle-dazzle leaking out of the neon welcome sign, wearing iron the way the other babes wore hats and pearls. Her arm slid up to level that shiny Roscoe at the beast like the last drop of whiskey sliding out the bottle, and the bullet hit home like that last drop hitting your tongue.

Just like that, she was gone, I was gone, and the Follower lived to see another day.

I hated her for it. I froze up and she stepped in and did the job my heart beat to do. And she kept on doing it. Now, every time the Follower was behind the eight-ball, this skirt would come around the corner burning powder like a chainsmoker blowing through a deck of Big Bosses. When the dust settled with the blood of everyone but the scholar, she had made a clean sneak. Got away. She would glance at me and there'd be a curve beneath that veil of hers and I'd know it because those big dark eyes smiled before they were gone. I hated her self-satisfaction, hated that she earned it, hated her. Didn't even know her name, but you can bet that I would've hated that, too.

When she finally, finally failed, I should've been over the moon, but I wasn't. Of course I wasn't. Because her cause was my cause, and her failure ended up mine, too. The Follower bit the big one and we slunk away like we did after all those successes, except we weren't lingering just out of sight and mind, and we weren't coming back. The broad didn't flash those peepers at me again- and if she did, I wasn't looking. I knew then it was over - it was all over.

This profession, it consumes you. And I mean that all the way. Everyone in your life is dust to you, because your life belongs to your ward- and you can't talk to him or her, and it wouldn't matter anyway; once he delivers his lines, he's dust, too, and you skedaddle your way to the next headliner. Last life I shadowed? Owned the Mojave. Assassinated, and I didn't care. Before that? A kid greener than a barrel of rads. Watched him go from never having seen the sun to ruling Deathclaws. Should miss him, but I don't. They just don't matter once they've made it to point B. But losing one? That one person is your _life_. When his clock keeps ticking, so does yours. When it stops... I'm still kicking but I've died more than I care to remember.

After that Follower choked, I set up camp at the closest dive. I couldn't understand it. He'd made it through kidnapping by tribals, and survived an expedition where the six other folk he traveled with got slaughtered. How could he go down to a pair of Scorps? I looked anywhere but at my reflection in the amber bottle and that's when I saw her, making friends with her own bottle of hooch at the other end of the bar. Those eyes smiled again except this time I could see the rest of her face do the same because she wasn't wearing those glad rags; she was dressed down, same as me. It was the second saddest sight I'd ever seen.

We shared the loss, so it figured that we shared a drink, too, and that we went on to share more in a room upstairs.

In the morning there was no sweet, languid cuddling up or awkward goodbyes while looking down. There was her, swiping on a fresh coat of lipstick. There was me, looping up a Half-Windsor. And just like that, she was gone, I was gone, and a cigarette sat dying in an ashtray under stripes of rising sun, wisps the last thing we shared curling lazily in the air.

I'd _known_ a lot of dolls - it's the "little death", you know, sometimes that's the only time that's yours - but that night was the closest I could remember feeling to anybody. She knew. She knew how it felt to not feel, and she knew how it felt when you finally did. She knew how I'd hated her and had hated me, too. She knew what it was like to die, and we'd died together in more ways than one, so when I next saw her and life was swelling her belly, I wanted it more than I can remember ever wanting anything.

We put our things in a box - her courtesan costume, my trusty .44 - and built a home around it. She took up cooking and learning how to knit; I took up a labour-intensive job at a ranch just around the bend. At the end of each day we lay next to each other, too exhausted to feel stir-crazy or apathetic or drawn to some stranger across the country or anything but the feel of her fingers around mine. And then the boy was born, had the strongest wail this side of the Four States, and a grip quicker than a red-handed greaser. He caught my thumb with his tiny little hand and _that_ was the first, all-time saddest sight I'd ever seen.

I tried. Years passed and I tried my damnedest because all I wanted was to care about that boy and that woman the way I could only care for the strangers my hands led me to protect. I surprised her with gifts and attempted to serenade, I taught him how to read and write his name - our name - and I tried to be proud when he wrote the 'E' the right way, and I tried to smile when she put on the dress I bought her and laughed at my singing, and I tried to be a husband, and I tried to be a father. It was all I wanted, and it was all right there, and I couldn't even touch it. I couldn't kiss my wife and feel anything more than her lips on mine. I couldn't hug my son and care. I didn't want to accept it, I thought I could change it, but the moment he'd wrapped his newborn fingers around my thumb as a baby, I knew: this was the way my heart beat - for somebody else. I couldn't change that.

He was five years old when I left, and that was the last I allowed a thought of him. My feet led me East. I saved a couple of slaves. A redhead with a dream. Even a surly Outcast, once. I did not think about the little boy or the woman in red. I left them in that home like I left my Magnum in that box.

I can't have a son, do you understand? I can't have a son because I can't be a dad, but if I could... I'd want to tell him that I'm proud of him. I'd want to say how happy I was that he took care of his mama, how sorry I am to not have been there to watch him grow up, and that his mama's sorry, too.

I can't have a wife because I can't be a husband, but I'd like to tell her that I hate her for leaving just like I did but I understand why. I'd want to say that I thought she was beautiful every morning, even before she'd combed her hair or rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

But I never will.

It was sunny the day I stepped out of their lives, and in my line of work, that means for good.

So, that's it. You've heard me sing. Would you mind... returning the favour? Could you play your Vegas Valley song again?


End file.
